The second volume of Freedom Collective collects poetry from thirteen women incarcerated at the California Institution for Women, produced through the Fall 2024 Creative Writing Workshop of the UC Sentencing Project (UCSP). The poems move through addiction and sobriety, motherhood and separation, love and its wreckage, prison conditions and labor, cultural heritage, and the daily work of survival and self-definition. Several pieces speak directly to the mechanics of incarceration — overcrowded bunks, indigent care, rehabilitative credit systems, prison labor — turning institutional language back on itself as critique.

The thirteen contributors — Jessicah Cowan, Aimee Gana, Chanel Marie Koi, Mindy Jones, Jen Little, L. Mazz, RCP, Dude Ramirez, O.T., Free Vargas, Jess M.W., Angel Yeska, and Zabel Joubalian — write with a mix of raw candor and technical range, from list poems and “Where I’m From” pieces to erasure-influenced forms and extended metaphor. A collective statement opens the volume, describing the workshop as a space of “intense relief from shame” and a shared practice of healing through voice. Author biographies close the zine, offering glimpses of each writer’s life, family, and interests beyond incarceration.

The workshop was facilitated by Rosie Stockton in partnership with the UC Sentencing Project, the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, and the UCLA Center for the Study of Women/Barbra Streisand Center.

The zine was designed by Kaya Napachoti

Research support came from Jane Dorotik, Mindy Jones, and Ayesha Waraich.